Join us Sunday, Feb. 8th from 1 – 4 pm, for the opening reception of “and sometimes gravity,” a group exhibition featuring the works of Chris Duncan, Assaf Evron, Alina Tenser and Radius.
Few works in this exhibition depict space or place in the strictly pictorial sense. Some occupy a semiotic space, leaping from referent to referent. Others seem to fold space, collapsing two places into one, and by extension, two times. “Quick now, here, now, always—” Others almost fully occupy the same place and time as us, a kind of base materialism not unlike our bodies. Still others inhabit a world so abstract and intangible that it can actually deny gravity and corporeality. And yet even these virtual spaces are so human, so thoroughly filled with all our hopes and desires that they reeks of us, like a pile of dirty laundry. Many do all these things at the same time.
Artists have likely been grappling with space and place since we were first able to travel; our nomadic ancestors contending with the here and now alongside the abstract idea of an expanse far beyond any immediate horizon. Globalization and virtuality lend to the perception of infinite
space, of collapsing distance between places, or making place irrelevant altogether; yet algorithms continue to seek and provide the specific, relevant, and local—ultimately setting down a horizon within our virtual world. Is there danger in perceiving a limitlessness to a space that quietly sets down invisible limits?
We keep using space and place interchangeably; that is probably the point. These works articulate that condition. They point towards the abstract, potential, and infinite, as well as the actual, finite, and sensible. And surely we do too. Living in the actual and the abstract simultaneously all day everyday, we are likely the site where all these spaces and places converge, like a vanishing point in reverse.